Thesis Statement: Theodor Geisel impacted children's literature through making books so children can read easier, actually writing the books with a different rhyming style, and teaching the readers lessons through their reading.
Topic: How did Theodor Geisel impact the world of children's literature?
A. He made books in a way to make it easier for children to learn how to read...
1. Once, when reading an article about how children more and more are having difficulties learning to read he decided to started writing words to go along with the cartoons he had drawn, inspiring the easy-to-read books we now know.
2. According to Ruth MacDonald of the Chicago Tribune, "He perfected the art of telling great stories with a vocabulary as small as sometimes fifty-two or fifty-three words."
B. He mastered word rhyme and making the moral of all his books to educate the children reading the books...
1. He said "Children want the same thing we want. [adults] To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." So he began writing cartoons and books that morals could not only apply to the children reading the book but also adults making them easier to understand from a child's stand-point.
2. Rhyming words not only make it easier for children to read the words but it also is more "entertaining" for children to read, therefore by Geisel creating this sing-song rhyming style it made easier for children to read the books and it also started a new way of writing childrens books.
C. He taught the readers lessons through their reading...
1. He made the books so the children couldn't only understand it but read it and he incorporated messages into the reading to teach kids lessons.
2. All of his books have certain morals that can apply to all people.
During the second half of the twentieth century Geisel "had a tremendous impact on children's reading habits and the way reading is taught and approached in the school system."
It happened by chance that Theodor Geisel even started writing children's books.
On the way back from Europe in 1936 he amused himself by putting together a nonsense poem to the rhythm of the ship's engine. Later he drew pictures to illustrate the rhyme and in 1937 published the result as And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, his first children's book.
The success of his early books confirmed Geisel as an important new children's writer.
However, it was The Cat in the Hat that solidified his reputation and revolutionized the world of children's book publishing.
When he wrote The Cat in the Hat he used a small vocabulary, simple enough for a young child to understand.
Young children were reading older books that weren't meant for children to understand so by Geisel writing The Cat in the Hat in that sort of way it made children want to read and they could understand what was actually happening. "Revolutionizing the world of children's book publishing."
"only 223 different words, . . . has created a story in rhyme which presents an impelling incentive to read."
The enthusiastic reception of The Cat in the Hat led Geisel to found Beginner Books, a publishing company specializing in easy-to-read books for children.
Geisel and Beginner Books created many modern classics for children, from Green Eggs and Ham, about the need to try new experiences, and Fox in Socks, a series of increasingly boisterous tongue-twisters, to The Lorax, about environmental preservation, and The Butter Battle Book, a fable based on the nuclear arms race. (In other word he was also teaching kids lessons in his books.)
Geisel wrote his last book about being human and getting old, it was more autobiographical then his normal books and as the Los Angeles Times says "We should all be lucky enough to get old the way this man, and Dr. Seuss himself, has gotten old."
Every year on March 2nd (Geisel's Birthday) is "Seuss Day," where everyone remembers his works and how he reinvented the way children's literature is written.
Publishers Weekly: "He revolutionized how children learned to read, and so we knew the celebration had to equal the passion people have for his books."
New York Times: "probably the best-loved and certainly the best-selling children's book writer of all time."
His "rhythmic verse rivals Lewis Carroll's," stated Stefan Kanfer in Time, "and his freestyle drawing recalls the loony sketches of Edward Lear."
Geisel had originally intended to become a professor of English, but "became frustrated when he was shunted into a particularly insignificant field of research."
After leaving graduate school in 1926, Geisel worked for a number of years as a freelance magazine cartoonist, selling cartoons and humorous prose pieces to the major humor magazines of the 1920s and 1930s.
how important an influence Dr. Seuss is–acknowledged or not, consciously or unconsciously–to metrical poets of my generation. He gave us part of our ear for rhyme and our ear for rhythm.
Of course, Seuss is subversive too–what could be more subversive in a Puritan society than to announce to kids that “Fun is good”? We romanticize childhood to the extent that we shun adulthood, but being a child is also to be helpless and in the power of others (as anyone with a toddler can tell you, this is extremely frustrating!). Yet “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
Dr. Seuss’s nimble prosody is to pick up any other contemporary book of children’s verse. So much of it is so lackluster–full of clunky, predictable rhymes, barely scanning, and larded with filler.
He started his Cat in the Hat series when he read an article by the novelist John Hersey who observed that the early readers used in schools were pallid and idiotic.
old that they had to be because they used only words on the Dolch reading list, Seuss took 223 of those words and created a funny, zany book worth reading.
Together with his wife Helen Palmer, he launched a whole line of Beginner Books some of which he wrote and illustrated.
Still others were done by other authors and illustrators but they all used the same, scholastically approved word lists, and revolutionized children's beginning reading books.
Seuss was one of the few authors of children's books who could get away with moralizing. His zany illustrations and rhymes allow the reader to enjoy the books and recognize the morals without feeling the weight of a sermon.
After being asked about how his books impacted childrens literature: A revolutionary one. He has been credited with killing off "Dick and Jane", the sterile heroes of older children's books, replacing them with clever rhymes, plot twists and rebellious heroes who do the unexpected. The Cat in the Hat was commissioned following publication in 1955 of an influential book, Why Johnny Can't Read, which said children were being held back by boring books. An article under the same name in Life magazine called for more imaginative illustration, and named Dr Seuss as a good example of what could be done. Now one in four American children receive Dr Seuss as their first book.
Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and his children's books have had a lasting impact on children's literature.
Dr. Seuss once said, "Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." Dr. Seuss' books certainly provide that for children.
children. Among the factors cited by the report was the fact that children were bored by the books that were available at the beginning reader level. His publisher sent Geisel a list of 400 words and challenged him to come up with a book that would use about 250 of the words. Geisel used 236 of the words for The Cat in the Hat, and it was an instant success.
The Dr. Seuss books definitively proved that it was possible to create engaging books with a limited vocabulary when the author/illustrator had both imagination and wit.
The plots of the Dr. Seuss books are entertaining and often teach a lesson, from the importance of taking responsibility for the earth and one another to learning what is really important.
His The Cat in the Hat is a landmark in the evolution of children’s literature.
Challenged to write a primer using a vocabulary of only 225 words, Dr. Seuss created a captivating tale that became the prototype of the best-selling Beginner Books series.
In this collection, he combined engaging stories, outrageous illustrations, and playful sounds to teach basic reading skills.
Admired among fellow authors and editors for his honesty and hard work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, accoring to Ruth MacDonald in the Chicago Tribune, "Perfected the art of telling great stories with a vocabulary as small as sometimes fifty-two or fifty-tree words."
Was not only a mast of word and rhyme and an original and eccentric artist.
Gerald Harrison, president of Random House's merchandise division, declared in Publisher's Weekly, "but down deep, I think he was basically an educator. He helped teach kids that reading was a joy and not a chore... For those of us who worked with him, he taught us to strive for excellence in all the books we published.
Geisel's last two books spent several months on the bestsellers lists and include themes that appealed to adults as well as children.
(To his death in 1991) Theodor Geisel remains the most famous and influential name in childrens literature.
Though Theodor Geisel books sometimes included morals, they sounded less like behavioral guidelines and more like, "listen to your feelings" and "take care of the environment," universal ideas that would win over all the hearts of kids from around the workd.
The reviews it garnered, though, instantly signaled "innovative coup," defying and exasperating long established educational conventions through its galloping but controlled verse.
Dr. Seuss had an imagination with a long tail
Parents those same kids are wittily incited to defy
Dr Seuss on writing for adults: "Adults are just obsolete children, and to hell with 'em."
With the Apogee of baby booms at the peak of Seuss's career, with all the children he sold so tons of books.
Seuss continues to be lauded as an advocate of children whose stories likewise appeal to adults
Seuss is credited with having engineered a sea change in literature for children, if not for America literature and language itself.
Though Dr. Suess had no children he claims to have written children books for his great understanding of children
Lines from fox in socks have entered the Oxford Companion to the English Language
Teachers still recommend Seuss books for beginning readers, especially kids who are struggling.
The repetitive rhymes and nonsense words can help youngsters understand the relationship between symbols and sounds.
But even more important, his works inspire a lifelong love of reading.
1985 Geisel was invited to speak to the members of Princeton's graduating class.
As he walked toward the lectern, the entire class stood up in unison and chanted "Green Eggs and Ham." That's genius.
It was Cerf who bet Geisel $50 that he couldn't write a book using just 50 words.
The result, in 1960, was "Green Eggs and Ham," Geisel's most popular work.
The bet came after the enormous success of "The Cat in the Hat," written with 225 words in an attempt to kill off the tedious Dick-and-Jane primers of the 1950s.
In their biography, "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel," the Morgans say the 225 words came from a first-grade vocabulary list provided by William Spaulding, the head of Houghton Mifflin's education division, who was eager to find a way to get more kids to read.
Geisel read the list over and over and couldn't figure out any way to create a story out of it. Finally, in desperation, he decided to find the first two words that rhymed and make them the title.
"I found 'cat'; and then I founf 'hat'." he said. "That's genius, you see!"
"Theodor Geisel." News Week 2000 2000, Print.
Theodor Seuss Geisel
Once referred to by Robert Wilson of the New York Times Book Review as "probably the best-loved and certainly the best-selling children's book writer of all time,"
Dr. Seuss, initiated the Random House division Beginner Books and gave new life to juvenile literature.
From his first children's book in 1937, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, to his recent The Butter Battle Book (1984), Dr. Seuss has provided his audience with entertainment as well as an occasional moral lesson.
In 1937 when And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was published, it was very different from the traditional books for children ... Eventually to start the revolution as to how childrens books are written
In 1957 Seuss published a book that more than any other influenced the market in children's primers. John Hershey had published an article in Life in 1954 titled "Why Johnny Can't Read." He complained about the dull, repetitious primers used to teach reading and stated the need for livelier books. Seuss responded with The Cat in the Hat .
Using a limited vocabulary, he told a story that was exciting--even anxiety-producing--with one of the most engaging characters in children's literature: a talking cat in a striped hat.
The structure of the book is typical of Seuss's work.
Despite the sameness of many of the Beginner Books, the accomplishment is considerable
They are easy to read but bright, boisterous, and engaging.
They most certainly changed the nature of early learning materials.
The immensely popular television program for children, Sesame Street , was developed as perhaps the farthest extension yet of what Geisel began.
Whether these high stimulus materials prepare a child to move on to more subdued materials or whether they leave him deaf and blind to subtle shades and suggested meanings will be for others to determine, but as Geisel explains to Miles Corwin of the Los Angeles Times, "Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age."
Dr. Seuss has always been a moralist taking stands against prejudice, tyranny, ecological abuse, and other flaws of human beings individually and collectively. In The Butter Battle Book he takes a tough moral stand in showing children that their elders have been foolish, and their foolishness has become dangerous to the survival of the world.
Dr. Seuss knows what children find humorous and just what limits of fantasy a child will permit.
Critics have debated whether Seuss is primarily a writer and only a cartoonist in his drawings or whether his real creativity is in the drawings, and the verse is only doggerel.
who in so many other books showed children how to escape reality by the power of the creative imagination, seems to see no creative antidote for the modern threat of nuclear war.
That skill at integration along with his natural with and humor and his high standards of quality help to explain why he is so successful. His books have sold millions of copies, and he has won dozens of awards for his work, including an Emmy Award in 1977 for Halloween is Grinch Night, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1980, the Regina Medal in 1982, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.
His options appear to him as animated creatures called Hunches. The difficulty of making decisions is visually supported in a series of doorways beyond which other doorways can be seen.
Dr. Seuss has definately invented how childrens literature is written today.
Other authors continue to copy the style to which he originally wrote his work.
Thesis Statement: Theodor Geisel impacted children's literature through making books so children can read easier, actually writing the books with a different rhyming style, and teaching the readers lessons through their reading.
Topic: How did Theodor Geisel impact the world of children's literature?
A. He made books in a way to make it easier for children to learn how to read...
1. Once, when reading an article about how children more and more are having difficulties learning to read he decided to started writing words to go along with the cartoons he had drawn, inspiring the easy-to-read books we now know.
2. According to Ruth MacDonald of the Chicago Tribune, "He perfected the art of telling great stories with a vocabulary as small as sometimes fifty-two or fifty-three words."
B. He mastered word rhyme and making the moral of all his books to educate the children reading the books...
1. He said "Children want the same thing we want. [adults] To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." So he began writing cartoons and books that morals could not only apply to the children reading the book but also adults making them easier to understand from a child's stand-point.
2. Rhyming words not only make it easier for children to read the words but it also is more "entertaining" for children to read, therefore by Geisel creating this sing-song rhyming style it made easier for children to read the books and it also started a new way of writing childrens books.
C. He taught the readers lessons through their reading...
1. He made the books so the children couldn't only understand it but read it and he incorporated messages into the reading to teach kids lessons.
2. All of his books have certain morals that can apply to all people.
Wiki notes-- Online sources
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81203
******http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html******
- He started his Cat in the Hat series when he read an article by the novelist John Hersey who observed that the early readers used in schools were pallid and idiotic.
- old that they had to be because they used only words on the Dolch reading list, Seuss took 223 of those words and created a funny, zany book worth reading.
- Together with his wife Helen Palmer, he launched a whole line of Beginner Books some of which he wrote and illustrated.
- Still others were done by other authors and illustrators but they all used the same, scholastically approved word lists, and revolutionized children's beginning reading books.
- Seuss was one of the few authors of children's books who could get away with moralizing. His zany illustrations and rhymes allow the reader to enjoy the books and recognize the morals without feeling the weight of a sermon.
Hurst, Carol. "carolhurst.com." http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html. Rebecca Otis, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://www.carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html>.******http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/drseuss.htm******
- After being asked about how his books impacted childrens literature: A revolutionary one. He has been credited with killing off "Dick and Jane", the sterile heroes of older children's books, replacing them with clever rhymes, plot twists and rebellious heroes who do the unexpected. The Cat in the Hat was commissioned following publication in 1955 of an influential book, Why Johnny Can't Read, which said children were being held back by boring books. An article under the same name in Life magazine called for more imaginative illustration, and named Dr Seuss as a good example of what could be done. Now one in four American children receive Dr Seuss as their first book.
- Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and his children's books have had a lasting impact on children's literature.
- Dr. Seuss once said, "Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted." Dr. Seuss' books certainly provide that for children.
- children. Among the factors cited by the report was the fact that children were bored by the books that were available at the beginning reader level. His publisher sent Geisel a list of 400 words and challenged him to come up with a book that would use about 250 of the words. Geisel used 236 of the words for The Cat in the Hat, and it was an instant success.
- The Dr. Seuss books definitively proved that it was possible to create engaging books with a limited vocabulary when the author/illustrator had both imagination and wit.
- The plots of the Dr. Seuss books are entertaining and often teach a lesson, from the importance of taking responsibility for the earth and one another to learning what is really important.
"childrensbooks.about.com." http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/drseuss.htm. about.com, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. <http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/drseuss******http://www.californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductee/theodor-geisel******
******http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Geisel-Theodor.html******
- Admired among fellow authors and editors for his honesty and hard work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, accoring to Ruth MacDonald in the Chicago Tribune, "Perfected the art of telling great stories with a vocabulary as small as sometimes fifty-two or fifty-tree words."
- Was not only a mast of word and rhyme and an original and eccentric artist.
- Gerald Harrison, president of Random House's merchandise division, declared in Publisher's Weekly, "but down deep, I think he was basically an educator. He helped teach kids that reading was a joy and not a chore... For those of us who worked with him, he taught us to strive for excellence in all the books we published.
- Geisel's last two books spent several months on the bestsellers lists and include themes that appealed to adults as well as children.
- (To his death in 1991) Theodor Geisel remains the most famous and influential name in childrens literature.
- Though Theodor Geisel books sometimes included morals, they sounded less like behavioral guidelines and more like, "listen to your feelings" and "take care of the environment," universal ideas that would win over all the hearts of kids from around the workd.
"noteablebiographies.org." http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Geisel-Theodor.html. advameg, 2010. Web. 29 Apr 2010. http://www.notablebiographies.com/Fi-Gi/Geisel-Theodor.html.Wiki notes-- Print sources
News Week 2000
- The reviews it garnered, though, instantly signaled "innovative coup," defying and exasperating long established educational conventions through its galloping but controlled verse.
- Dr. Seuss had an imagination with a long tail
- Parents those same kids are wittily incited to defy
- Dr Seuss on writing for adults: "Adults are just obsolete children, and to hell with 'em."
- With the Apogee of baby booms at the peak of Seuss's career, with all the children he sold so tons of books.
- Seuss continues to be lauded as an advocate of children whose stories likewise appeal to adults
- Seuss is credited with having engineered a sea change in literature for children, if not for America literature and language itself.
- Though Dr. Suess had no children he claims to have written children books for his great understanding of children
- Lines from fox in socks have entered the Oxford Companion to the English Language
- Teachers still recommend Seuss books for beginning readers, especially kids who are struggling.
- The repetitive rhymes and nonsense words can help youngsters understand the relationship between symbols and sounds.
- But even more important, his works inspire a lifelong love of reading.
- 1985 Geisel was invited to speak to the members of Princeton's graduating class.
- As he walked toward the lectern, the entire class stood up in unison and chanted "Green Eggs and Ham." That's genius.
- It was Cerf who bet Geisel $50 that he couldn't write a book using just 50 words.
- The result, in 1960, was "Green Eggs and Ham," Geisel's most popular work.
- The bet came after the enormous success of "The Cat in the Hat," written with 225 words in an attempt to kill off the tedious Dick-and-Jane primers of the 1950s.
- In their biography, "Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel," the Morgans say the 225 words came from a first-grade vocabulary list provided by William Spaulding, the head of Houghton Mifflin's education division, who was eager to find a way to get more kids to read.
- Geisel read the list over and over and couldn't figure out any way to create a story out of it. Finally, in desperation, he decided to find the first two words that rhymed and make them the title.
- "I found 'cat'; and then I founf 'hat'." he said. "That's genius, you see!"
"Theodor Geisel." News Week 2000 2000, Print.Theodor Seuss Geisel
- Once referred to by Robert Wilson of the New York Times Book Review as "probably the best-loved and certainly the best-selling children's book writer of all time,"
- Dr. Seuss, initiated the Random House division Beginner Books and gave new life to juvenile literature.
- From his first children's book in 1937, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, to his recent The Butter Battle Book (1984), Dr. Seuss has provided his audience with entertainment as well as an occasional moral lesson.
- In 1937 when And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was published, it was very different from the traditional books for children ... Eventually to start the revolution as to how childrens books are written
- In 1957 Seuss published a book that more than any other influenced the market in children's primers. John Hershey had published an article in Life in 1954 titled "Why Johnny Can't Read." He complained about the dull, repetitious primers used to teach reading and stated the need for livelier books. Seuss responded with The Cat in the Hat .
- Using a limited vocabulary, he told a story that was exciting--even anxiety-producing--with one of the most engaging characters in children's literature: a talking cat in a striped hat.
- The structure of the book is typical of Seuss's work.
- Despite the sameness of many of the Beginner Books, the accomplishment is considerable
- They are easy to read but bright, boisterous, and engaging.
- They most certainly changed the nature of early learning materials.
- The immensely popular television program for children, Sesame Street , was developed as perhaps the farthest extension yet of what Geisel began.
- Whether these high stimulus materials prepare a child to move on to more subdued materials or whether they leave him deaf and blind to subtle shades and suggested meanings will be for others to determine, but as Geisel explains to Miles Corwin of the Los Angeles Times, "Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age."
- Dr. Seuss has always been a moralist taking stands against prejudice, tyranny, ecological abuse, and other flaws of human beings individually and collectively. In The Butter Battle Book he takes a tough moral stand in showing children that their elders have been foolish, and their foolishness has become dangerous to the survival of the world.
- Dr. Seuss knows what children find humorous and just what limits of fantasy a child will permit.
- Critics have debated whether Seuss is primarily a writer and only a cartoonist in his drawings or whether his real creativity is in the drawings, and the verse is only doggerel.
- who in so many other books showed children how to escape reality by the power of the creative imagination, seems to see no creative antidote for the modern threat of nuclear war.
- That skill at integration along with his natural with and humor and his high standards of quality help to explain why he is so successful. His books have sold millions of copies, and he has won dozens of awards for his work, including an Emmy Award in 1977 for Halloween is Grinch Night, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 1980, the Regina Medal in 1982, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1984.
- His options appear to him as animated creatures called Hunches. The difficulty of making decisions is visually supported in a series of doorways beyond which other doorways can be seen.
- Dr. Seuss has definately invented how childrens literature is written today.
- Other authors continue to copy the style to which he originally wrote his work.
Kibler, Myra. Theodor Seuss Geisel. 1st edition. Gale, Cengage Learning , 2007. (ONLINE). Print.